Zoom Gear & Home Recording Forum

Just wondering something with PC recording and MIDI.
As listed in my sig, I use both Samplitude Music Studio and Mixcraft. I've seen in the Preferences menu of both a selection for 24 bit resolution recording and rendering. Having a 3.5 ghz Dual Core PC and almost 3 gigs of RAM, does my system have enough resources for 24 bit? How would I get that? Is it a sound card thing? Also, I've heard indications from various sources that 24 bit recording is over rated. Your thoughts?

Any input appreciated.

Everything you say is true.

Yes it's a soundcard thing (your card has to support it)

Dave Chick (expert #1 & a pro) says 24bit is important for leaving space in a recording to apply effects etc. Dave Criddle (expert #2) has run experiments that show it doesn't make any difference - at least for a home recorder.

Files are bigger, not always compatible and if you don't miss it you most likely don't need it.

Kinda what I thought!!

Thanks!

We're all mixing down to MP3, so in the end it really does not make a difference. If you're doing a CD, arguably it will improve the sound of the final mix, but you still have to mix down to 16bit for the CD.

In the end, I don't think it's worth the extra storage space. I will occassionally mix down my 16bit tracks to a 24bit stereo wav, but 99% of the time I keep it all 16 bit.

Yeah, that's pretty much what I gathered before, but I wanted to hear some takes of some of the guys here just out of interest of what you think of it. Seems like the really hard-core audiophiles make too much out of it. I used to think that it could provide more headroom in the mix, but probably not much, or like you said, not enough to make the extra expense and bother worth it.
Thanks again, guyz!!

As far as headroom goes, if your bouncing between -12db and 0db you're doing fine. I record almost all my tracks with light compression and make sure I'm above -12db without clipping. That works fine.

Thanks for the tip!!

you may have to change some settings in your sequencer as well.

Related to this but not completely relevant: I recently found out my sequencer had been using my onboard s/c instead of the dedicated soundcard I'd also put in the computer. If I'd been using the sequencers to also record my tracks, I would have found this out right away. But I use an other program for recording. However, the sequencer started to run less smoothly in the more busy parts of songs. Since changing the settings so that the sequencer is using the good s/c, it runs smoothly again..

Anyway, I'd recommend to record in the best quality you can, even if it is going to be rendered to 16bit anyway afterwards. You always want your source material to be as good as you can get it.

That oversimplifies the matter a bit. It's a cost benefit analysis. Would it make sense to record 48bit? At some point the cost in terms of storage space and how hard you're hitting the processor is higher than the minuscule increase in fidelity you're achieving. If you know your music will be primarily heard as an MP3 over the internet there's just not much point in doing all your tracks at 24bit assuming you know how to record at good levels (keep it above -12db, don't clip). For me it would just be a disincentive to recording as I would become too concerned with filling my hard drive with all my tracks and takes and punch-ins rather than focusing on just making and recording music.

If our objective was to achieve the highest possible sound quality, we'd all be renting studio time. This is a hobby for most of us, and 16bit resolution is good enough for many. For those who hope to make it more than a hobby, or want to release a CD, I suppose there is some advantage to recording 24bit.

Man dood, thanks to Mr. Zee (and Google bots) there is the Google custom search box up there in da white area.....many threads talking about this very ting.
Yes, I said ting.
Anyway, let's talk about me. I use 24 all the time.
You should have put your hard drive size down...it's more of a size thing really. Do you have the room in the Dell? Probably.
Here is a most excellent TweakHead article dat sez yah-hah to twenty-fah.

http://www.tweakheadz.com/16_vs_24_bit_audio.htm

Gnarly

I think this quote is important to consider:

That's a pretty big IF. Most of us have less than stellar mics and preamps.

Really! Geez, Your recordings don't sound it!!!


Weeell, let's take a look at the ol' Free Space meter;


Nope! Not quite enough free space.

Also, for the record, Mr. Sunderbunz;
I KNOW I can get on Google, Yahoo, Ask.com or any number of a dozen search engines and find any info about this issue or any home recording issue, but (did ya catch this in the above post?) I wanted to hear what YOU GUYZ (yes, I spelled it GUYZ, meaning Zo, tony, YOU or ((almost)) anybody else that's a member of this forum) think of it. If Zo doesn't mind the wasted space for de thread, why should YOU??

Thanks for the linky.

Should we tell him the custom search only searches the Zoom board?....



Nah......


No, this is a pretty big if: ..... IF

This makes sense.
I would probably be overtaxing my processor trying to get 24 bit anyway. As it is already, my resources start to get dicey, even with all my other un-needed programs shut down and I would like to avoid having to tweak my ASIO drivers. Never to this point had an issue with latency, and don't want to.

This is important too, from the same article linked above:


In other words, work on your signal chain before you worry about 16 versus 24 bit.

Could you please turn the volume down on yer sig, Voak?









Sorry, little too much Teek last night....

And from the very same article: